


Time, Mystical Time (Cutting Me Open, then Healing Me Fine)

by palaces_out_of_paragraphs



Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: (sort of), AU where Barry doesn’t mess everything up with his time travel stunt, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Kissing, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Pining, no matter what path they took to get there, this kiss was meant to be, well he does but Iris fixes it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27093655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palaces_out_of_paragraphs/pseuds/palaces_out_of_paragraphs
Summary: Iris West dreams of things that both have and haven’t happened. She dreams of standing on the waterfront, of Barry’s mouth hot against hers and his hands in her hair and how it’s like there’s lightning living in the lining of his skin, like there are bolts of thunder in his blood, and he’s lighting her up when they touch.(A slight Season 1 AU. Because no matter how many timelines get erased, some events always take place, and Iris West was always meant to stand on the waterfront and kiss Barry Allen for the first - and second first -  time.)
Relationships: Barry Allen & Iris West, Barry Allen/Iris West
Comments: 17
Kudos: 474





	Time, Mystical Time (Cutting Me Open, then Healing Me Fine)

The dream feels both hazy and real, like watching an old film, the screen flickering, blurry and faded ‘round the corners.

She is standing on the waterfront, and she’s dimly aware of the sound of distant thunder and the cloudy sky she’s standing under and the way there’s something grey rolling in on the horizon.

And Iris feels like she should remember what it is, should know why she’s there and why the wind is whipping so fiercely at the emerald green coat that she wears, but she can’t, her memory’s all cloudy and confused.

And then she sees Barry, and it’s like a camera coming into focus, and with sharp, utter clarity Iris can see the way he’s looking at her.

(He’s looking at her like she is a fairytale. Like she is something ethereal.)

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” she hears herself say under his gaze, because how could she not? “And at first I was mad, but then I realized it was because I didn’t want to.”

( _Oh,_ how she didn’t want to. Doesn’t want to. Can’t see herself ever stop wanting to.)

And the expression on his face is like the sun breaking through, like everything he’d ever wanted could be held in the words she’s just spoken.

“I’ve never stopped thinking about you,” he says, and then his mouth is hot against hers and his hands are in her hair and it feels real, so, so achingly _real._

The kiss steals air from her lungs and sends her head spinning, and Iris can taste the sea salt from the waterfront air on his lips, all stinging and sharp, and feel the heat that rolls off his body and buzzes in-between them like glowing bursts of fireworks.

(She has had this dream for exactly four nights in a row. It just showed up one night without warning and hasn’t left her since, and Iris pretends she doesn’t want the fantasy and isn't sighing against dream Barry’s mouth.

And the dream feel less like a dream and more like a memory, or a sense of déjà vu. Except that doesn’t make any sense, because to have déjà vu, you have to have actually experienced it the first time.)

And when Iris wakes up she can still feel the heat of his breath like it’s burned into the back of her mind and she rolls over, sheets twisting around her, and she picks her phone up off the nightstand, thumbs hovering over the search engine.

 _Can you have memories of things that have never happened?_ she types. 

Erases it.

_Can you dream of days that never were?_

Backspaces.

_How to stop dreaming of kissing my best friend because it’s become a nightly occurrence and I really need to stop dreaming about it except I actually might not want to after all because the feel of him against my skin is -_

Iris shuts her phone off, doesn’t finish her sentence.

Google can’t help her now.

❦

Iris goes to the police station, drops coffee off for her dad, and she doesn’t mean to walk to Barry’s office, she really doesn’t, it’s just that she’s so _used_ to it. The path comes automatically, like muscle memory, and she doesn’t even realize her feet have carried her there until she’s staring at him through the glass panes in his office door.

And it’s an odd thing, Iris finds, to be standing apart from him, separated by glass, like he is some display in a museum or art in a gallery she can only ever dream of touching, as if she hasn’t literally grown up knowing how his hand fits in hers and how his arms feel around her.

(Perfect. They feel perfect. Like sanctuary, like coming home, like maybe life has given them each other so that they can at least have one thing in this foolish world that’s all faultless and flawless despite whatever else has happened.)

“Iris?”

Barry spots her on the other side of the glass, and it’s like his eyes light up at the sight of her, like one of those hand-held sparklers you can get in a box in the summer, all sparkling and bright. 

(And Iris tries not to think of her dream and she tries not to think of what his fingers feel like framing her face and she pretty much fails spectacularly.)

Iris gives up and walks inside, because she’s come this far and it’s not like she can turn around and run away, not now that he’s spotted her, not now that he’s smiling all happy and wide like his smile’s so big it might slide off his face.

Besides, they’re best friends. They’ve always been best friends. Will always _be_ best friends. Talking to him is second nature, like it’s built right into her.

“Hey, Bear.”

“Iris, what are you doing here? Okay, that came out wrong. Uh,” Barry moves to stand, ends up bumping into his desk as he unfolds those long legs of his, and then rights the canister he’s knocked over, self-consciously shoving pens back inside of it. 

“Not that I’m not happy to see you. I’m always happy to see you. I mean, you’re _Iris_ ,” he says, that last sentence said in a way like it’s some sort of scientific fact, like things fall because of gravity, and fish swim in the sea, and he’s happy to see her simply because he’s Barry Allen and she’s Iris West. “But what are you doing here? Am I late for plans we made and I forgot about...again?”

He’s doing that thing again where he’s talking a mile a minute, words running together like he’s no longer even speaking English. And Iris bites the inside of her cheek, rolls her eyes instead of smiling, because she’s been listening to him speeding through his strung together sentences her whole life so she should be quite immune to its effects by now, thank you very much. 

She’s not, though. She finds his flustered stream of consciousness absolutely adorable, a fact she’s currently trying not to acknowledge.

(She’s failing, by the way.)

“Just came by to say hi,” Iris says. “Feels like I hardly get to see you much lately.”

Except at night, in her dreams, apparently. Which she is so definitely not saying.

So instead, she leans back against his desk and says, “Fill me in. What new nerdy thing are you obsessed with this week?”

He shoots her a look that’s vaguely offended, eyes all wide like he has no idea why on Earth she’d ask him that. “What makes you think I’m into some new nerdy thing?”

Iris crosses her arms, raises an eyebrow.

Barry caves in under thirty seconds, and in less than sixty, he’s in front of his whiteboard, drawing out diagrams and rambling about time travel, about protons and particles and fixed points in time. And he’s talking so fast Iris can’t follow it all, but she listens, because she likes that he’s comfortable enough to ramble around her, all rapid-fire and uncensored.

(And she likes the sound of his voice, anyway. Those nine months she spent without it felt wrong, like going nine months without music.)

“And _that_ ,” Barry is saying as he sweeps a long curve on the board, “is why he proposes that in every timeline, there’s a universal constant, an event that always takes place, a thing that remains the same no matter how everything else around it has changed.”

Iris squints at his scribbles, tries to make sense of fractured timelines and changeless constants that endure through it all, and she finds herself murmuring:

“A universal constant. Like you and me.”

She doesn’t know what made her say it, didn’t even realize she _was_ saying it. But now the words are there hanging in the air between them and she can’t take them back. 

_Won’t_ take them back. 

Because he’s Barry and she’s Iris, and it only makes sense that they’re each other’s universal constants. If there were such a thing as multiverses, if there was such a thing as time travel and days being reset and events being rewritten, she knows without question or pause that they’ll always find each other, always be best friends.

Always love each other. 

Barry stares at her, and she holds her breath, and he says:

“Yeah. Exactly like you and me.”

❦

Iris ends up at the waterfront eventually.

It was inevitable, really. It’s a major part of the city. She passes it on her way to work and then again on her way back home and she’s been there so many times before for this or for that, so it makes sense that she’d end up back there someday, she supposes.

She just didn’t think it would be right after dreaming of kissing Barry there for the fifth night in a row. 

But her boss wants her to check out the site of this new development some company is supposedly building, and the new development, Iris found when she’d actually checked the address, was at the waterfront, because of course it was. So that’s where Iris stands now, snapping reference photos with her phone and trying to remember what the zoning information from City Hall said, and when she can’t find the data in any of her emails, Iris belatedly remembers that her boss had given her a physical file she was pretty sure he’d bribed copies from from some city official.

A file she’d carried into the police station when she’d visited her dad the day before, and accidentally walked off and left on his desk because it was too big to fit in her purse. 

Iris pulls up her dad’s number and hits send, hoping he hasn’t taken his lunch break yet.

“Hey, Dad,” Iris says when he answers, “I think I left a file I need on your desk. Is there any way you can bring it to me down at the waterfront?”

“Hold on a minute,” he says, and Iris can hear papers being rustled on his desk and the muffled sound of shouting in the background, and she can tell that he’s in the middle of dealing with something.

“Okay,” she finally hears him say, though he sounds all distant and distracted. “Got your file. I can’t bring it to you right now, but Barry’s on his lunch break, so he might be able to.”

Barry, on the waterfront with her, just like she’s dreamt for five nights in a row.

“ _No,”_ Iris all but shouts into her phone, “no, dad, it’s okay, I’ll just - “

But her dad hasn’t heard her, has been listening to some kind of commotion going on at the station instead, and says, “Listen, baby, I’ve got to go, but I’ll ask Barry.”

And before Iris can come up with an excuse, can invent any reason for why on Earth she wouldn’t want her best friend to bring her the file she’s literally just asked for that doesn’t involve telling her dad the words _“In my head, I’m kissing him here every time I go to bed,”_ the line disconnects.

Iris mutters in frustration, shoves her phone into her pocket, and as she’s pulling her hand back out, her eyes catch on the swatch of emerald green and she realizes she’s wearing the exact same coat that she wears in her dream.

(And she thinks about a kiss that never was and a confession that never came and wonders if history can repeat itself if it never even really happened in the first place.)

❦

The sky is slate grey and the air is thick with mist and Iris is wondering if you can get déjà vu from dreaming when she turns and sees Barry standing behind her, file in hand.

His eyes travel down to her coat and he blinks, does a double take, swallows hard when he stares at her, like he wants to look away, but is too spellbound by the sight of her.

And seeing him shouldn’t feel different or new. She’s seen him almost every day of her life, after all, has known him almost as long as she’s been on this Earth. And yet it’s like her dream’s bleeding through because she senses this intenseness as their eyes lock, notices this tension, like they’re both waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Hi,” he finally says. “Uh, your dad said you needed a file?”

“Right,” Iris says, because he’s here to bring her a file, not kiss her, of course, and she feels something like regret bloom in her chest at the reminder.

(“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” the dream version of her says, her sleeping counterparts words echoing around in her very awake head. “I didn’t want to.”)

And the thing is, Iris has been fighting this, it’s what she’s good at: she is as tough as they come, has been in boxing gloves since she was old enough to walk, can knock someone out with the sheer force of her fist. But she’s been so busy fighting, it’s like she’s almost forgotten _why_ she’s fighting this, if she even has a reason to actually _want_ to fight this. 

It’s certainly getting hard to think of a reason now, as she’s watching a puff of fog leave his lips from the heat of his breath against the cold air, and making her wonder how the warmth of his mouth would feel if it were against hers instead.

“Thank you for coming,” Iris says, snapping back to reality and tentatively taking a step toward him so she can take the file. “Hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

He exhales a laugh, all breathless and light, ducks his head down, and to the ground he murmurs, “Nothing’s too much trouble if it’s for you.”

And he says it so easily, like it’s just a fact of life that there’s not a thing in this world he wouldn’t do for her. Like the sky is blue and the grass is green and he’d go to the ends of the earth if it meant making her smile. 

And when he lifts his head back up to look at her, the cloudy grey sky reflects in his eyes, lining their sea green with slivers of silver, and Iris can’t look away. Instead, she steps even closer, doesn’t stop till the tips of her shoes are right in front of his. He reaches out to hand her the file, but instead of taking it, her hand completely bypasses it, coming up to rest against his chest, and she presses her palm right over the beat of his heart, protectively, almost possessively, as if it belongs to her.

(She’s starting to think maybe it does.)

“ _Iris_ ,” Barry whispers, and he says her name so softly, the sound of it nearly floats away on the wind, “what are you doing?”

 _Seeing if you kiss like I remember_ , she thinks.

Because the thing is, she can _feel_ it, feel the pure depth of this yearning and pining unwinding in the air in-between them. And maybe, if there really was such a thing as time travel, this would always be inevitable, _they’d_ always be inevitable. Barry and Iris, together: A universal constant, a little piece of fate, a fixed point in time that stayed, no matter what else fell apart and faded away.

And so Iris reaches up, leans into his touch, remembers a wedding veil and a dinosaur and thinks _we’ve been married for most of our lives anyway._ And slowly, curiously, like it’s both a bit of an experiment and a bit like accepting destiny, she tilts her head back, lips hovering right under his, and she feels Barry’s breath hitch in his chest right under her hand, and then she closes what’s left of the gap.

And then his arms are coming up around her, file forgotten and falling from his hands, pages floating down through the air and scattering over the sidewalk like white paper snow, and Barry’s kissing her back, all hungry and eager and loving. And he is so tall and she is so small that his body is curled over hers while she is arching up, and they curve together impossibly perfect and right, like two constellations in the sky that were always made to be. And Iris West finds that kissing Barry Allen is breath-stealing and mind-bending, intoxicating and electrifying and can send shivers sliding right down her spine.

(It’s like there’s lightning living in the lining of his skin, like there are bolts of thunder in his blood, lighting her up when they touch. 

And she can _feel_ it, feel sparks against her skin from the burning heat of him, like golden fire.)

And she can also feel the sheer _want_ from him when he kisses her, the raw ache like he’s been waiting and wanting and wishing for this - for _her_ \- his whole life. But his intensity is also tempered with tender reverence, a gentleness she didn’t expect in the way he cradles her face in the curve of his palms and murmurs her name against her mouth, like it’s some sort of song. 

“I’ve never stopped thinking about you,” he whispers, like he was always meant to stand there and say those words to her.

And it’s better than she dreamt.

**Author's Note:**

> _Time, mystical time,  
>  Cuttin' me open, then healin' me fine,  
> Were there clues I didn't see?  
> And isn't it just so pretty to think,  
> All along there was some invisible string,  
> Tying you to me?_
> 
> Invisible String definitely has westallen vibes, and for other miscellaneous thoughts about The Gold Standard™️, follow me on Twitter (@irisbestallen) or Tumblr (iris-west-allens.tumblr.com).
> 
> (Still newish to fic writing, so I’d love if you’d leave a comment or kudos if you liked this. ❤️)


End file.
